Earl Woodruff University of Toronto Clare Brett Ontario Institute for Studies in Education Fostering scholarly collaboration in young children through the development of electronic • commenting INTRODUCTION AND PURPOSE Technology is reshaping our ability and opportunity to collaborate with peers (Grudin, 1991). From the field of computer-supported collaborative work we see technical improvements to electronic collaboration that are designed to minimise geographical and chronological factors - making it easier for people to work together across a hall or across international borders (Fish et al., 1990). In schools, networked communication between students is beginning to change collaboration in the classroom by allowing students to work together to assist each other irrespective of traditional grouping and space considerations. Students may comment upon, or contribute to, another's ideas while working in a completely different classroom or at terminals arm's lengths apart. The aim of this article is to address the contribution that electronically networked classroom environments can have upon the collaborative efforts of 6--8 year old students. The particular software environment we used is called CSILE. At the heart of the system is a student-generated database. The program supports knowledge building by helping students work with information in the database; helping them notice missing or incorrect information, formulate questions, and plan external searches for information that will be entered as notes (Scardamalia et al., 1989). Each of the computers in the classroom is linked to the shared database via a high-speed network. By default, all notes entered into the database are publicly accessible to all other students registered on the system. Since each student in CSILE has simultaneous access to a database of text and graphical notes that the students produce themselves, they are able to retrieve, read and comment upon one another's contributions. Searching for and retrieving notes in this system provides students with much more information than simply lists of facts, since contributors